These small habits will become increasingly important in the AI era.

We are now in the era of AI. Using AI as an assistant in daily life and work has increasingly become a routine for everyone.

Against this backdrop, certain habits and mindsets are becoming increasingly important. Some of them help individuals retain their unique value in the AI era, while others enable us to better leverage AI to serve our own needs...

In today's article, I would like to share some insights and reflections with you to help you better prepare for the future.

1. Strengthen the uniqueness of your thinking, starting with recording your ideas and feelings

Many people may have a doubt: now that we have AI that we can ask for solutions to almost all problems, how can we reflect our individual value?

My take on this is: what AI can access is the information and knowledge of all humanity, and the answers it can present and provide are also average. But when it comes to ourselves, each of us has our own growth experience, information accumulation, taste preferences... It is these that form a way of thinking that is completely different from AI.

In other words, the difference and advantage between us and AI lie in our completely different information weighting and compression algorithms compared to AI.

These elements make up our personality, build our unique characters, traits and thinking patterns that distinguish us from others, and also make the world more diversified.

Therefore, a very important suggestion is to maintain and strengthen this unique weighting, and reinforce our individuality and uniqueness as individuals. This is likely the foundation and prerequisite for us to retain our value in the AI era.

How can we achieve this? One training method is to record your ideas and feelings more often, which will help you sort out your thoughts, maintain and strengthen your uniqueness.

For example:

After reading a novel or watching a film and TV drama, try to write a short review in a few sentences. You don't need to pursue excellent writing, but start from yourself and record your own feelings, which are the things that truly belong to you.

When you come across a knowledge point that strikes a chord, try to associate and think about it. You don't need to pursue comprehensiveness or great depth, but give full play to your own taste and interests based on your accumulated experience and orientation.

This can help you maintain your uniqueness and value in the future AI-dominated world that is likely to be highly homogeneous.

2. Engage and communicate with others more to strengthen your connection with the world

Some people may think: we can chat with AI and let AI help us solve problems and relieve worries, so do we no longer need to build connections with "people"?

My view is that communicating with AI is certainly very useful, but this does not mean that we no longer need to communicate with real human beings. On the contrary, communication with people may become even more important.

Why is that?

On the one hand, the communication style of AI is still very different from that of real human beings. If you rely too much on communicating with AI, it may weaken our ability to get along with others and make us more and more closed. For now, it is impossible for us to be completely isolated from others in daily life, and we always need to interact with other people.

On the other hand, our social needs are not limited to communication, but also include "doing one thing together", which can bring us a real sense of connection and belonging. This is something that AI is very difficult to replace at present.

Therefore, I would suggest: if you are used to communicating with AI, you can also try to step out of your comfort zone consciously, and contact with more people to achieve a hedging effect.

For one thing, you can try to participate in some activities and chat with people you meet at the events. Let your brain be exposed to new patterns and challenges, helping it to improve itself better.

For another, try to meet friends offline more often and do things together, such as shopping, parties, entertainment, group activities... This will better strengthen your connection with the world and enhance your sense of belonging.

3. Learn a foreign language in daily life, which can effectively curb brain aging

Some people may wonder: with AI translation, do we not need to learn foreign languages at all? It is enough to let AI do the translation for any demand.

In fact, learning a foreign language has a very important function: it can provide cognitive reserve for the brain and prevent cognitive decline caused by diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.

What is cognitive reserve? Simply put, it refers to improving the connection efficiency of neurons in the neural network. Even if some neurons stop functioning due to aging and diseases, other neurons can make up for it.

A lot of studies have found that learning a foreign language can effectively improve cognitive reserve. For example, a 2014 study found that as bilingual people age, their temporal lobes and parietal lobes are less vulnerable to damage, while the connectivity between the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and parietal lobe becomes stronger, which can effectively improve cognitive reserve. *1

At the same time, foreign language learning can improve the brain's executive control ability and attention, and increase the connection density of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, which can effectively counteract the damage caused by aging.

In general, the brain of people who speak two languages ages less than that of people who only master one language. Learning three or four languages will have a better effect, but the increment of the effect will gradually decrease. To put it simply: if you pursue cost-effectiveness, mastering one foreign language proficiently is enough. If you have enough time and interest, the more languages you learn, the better.

Therefore, if you only use it for practical application, AI translation may be sufficient; but if you want to exercise your brain, maintain better cognitive ability and avoid Alzheimer's disease, learning a foreign language is a very useful measure.

4. Keep a daily memo, and let AI help you record your life

I have a habit of preparing a dedicated memo note. No matter what I am doing, as long as I think "this information is worth writing down", I will immediately record it on this memo with one sentence or several keywords.

It mainly includes the following types of information:

Interesting concepts, problems and knowledge points that are worth spending time researching later;

What actions have been taken, and what information and details may be useful in the future;

The thinking process and feelings when making a certain judgment, for future review.

Then, in my spare time, I will open this memo, take a general look, see what can be further processed, what needs me to deepen my memory repeatedly, and what can be integrated and connected.

If I need to use something I recorded before later, such as the actions I took for a certain problem, the problems and thinking process I encountered when handling a certain project, I will search in this "memo" note immediately to find the records I made at that time.

And with the help of AI, this habit has become even more valuable.

Whenever you have a question, you can immediately ask AI to help you search and extract relevant information from this memo, so as to help you bring the value of past experience and actions into play again.

It is like your external brain and knowledge base, and AI is the central control center that calls it.

Over time, with the support of AI, it will become your most valuable exclusive "toolkit".

5. Occasionally read some content that requires thinking to cultivate the habit of thinking

Some people may ask: with AI, it has become very easy for us to obtain and extract information, so is it still necessary to read and learn?

My view is that it is very necessary.

Why? The most essential reason is that there is a world of difference between a piece of knowledge that exists in your brain, chewed, thought about, fully digested and mastered by you, and one that just exists outside, easily obtained by you to provide information.

The former will become part of your thinking, helping you view problems, understand things and make decisions; the latter, you are actually just following a map, and once you lose detailed guidance and explanation, you may be at a loss and lose your direction.

Only the things that are truly internalized into your brain are the things that truly belong to you.

Therefore, I have always emphasized that the most important purpose of our reading and learning is not to memorize information, but to exercise our brain, so that it can absorb and internalize this knowledge, and promote better thinking and operation.

In other words, we may forget the information we read, but we will not lose the "traces" trained through reading. The accumulation of these traces forms our thinking ability.

Therefore, you might as well read some complex content that requires thinking and absorption occasionally, which is conducive to keeping your brain active, so as to create value better.

6. Improve a "makeshift" from time to time to optimize your life and work processes

AI has a great advantage: almost everything you can think of can be realized with its help, which only requires a little time and operation.

Therefore, if you don't know what to do with AI to help yourself, I have a small suggestion: try to find the imperfect "makeshifts" in your life, and then let AI help you solve them.

In our daily life and work, we will definitely encounter many small problems, which will generate friction to our actions and make us feel inconvenient.

But most of the time, these inconveniences are not so unbearable, and we can get through them by enduring for a while, which leads to the fact that they have never been solved. Over time, they have become our habits and turned into a kind of "makeshift".

But have you ever thought about how much change it will bring to your life once you solve these "makeshifts"?

For example: many people often come up with great ideas, but fail to write them down in time just because of the trouble. Once this step is simplified, you can record one or two more ideas every day, which will generate hundreds of more ideas in a year. Even if only 5% of them are useful, it is absolutely worth the effort.

In that case, you can completely use AI to develop a small recording tool that fully adapts to your own needs. You don't need to make it perfect, nor do you need to pursue commercialization. As long as it can solve your own problems, help you reduce a little friction and increase a little efficiency, it is enough.

Even if it can only increase the efficiency by one thousandth or one ten thousandth, over time, it will bring you huge benefits.

7. Try to do nothing occasionally, and get used to the low-stimulation mode

Finally, I would like to share a small habit that seems unrelated to AI but I think is very important.

We are always chasing time, everything is for "speed" and "efficiency", pursuing to do more things in less time; if we stop, we will feel empty, bored, and feel that we are wasting time. Thus, we always live in a state of high anxiety and constant chasing of time.

This is actually unnecessary. It will only make us busier and more numb, and over time, we will gradually lose our perception and feeling of life.

Therefore, a simple small suggestion is: try to do nothing, think of nothing, sit quietly for 15 minutes.

During these 15 minutes, your brain will definitely be flooded with a lot of thoughts, and there may even be voices urging you to stand up and take action immediately. Try to ignore them, let them rise and fall, come and go freely.

If conditions permit, you can go outside to find a corner with a nice environment, temporarily turn off your thinking, open your senses, focus on listening, watching, smelling, and feel everything around you.

You will find that after several such exercises, your nerves will become more relaxed and less tense than before; your brain will also get more used to this low-stimulation mode, and no longer urge you to play with your mobile phone or check messages...

You can better perceive the internal signals of your body, and better control your thoughts, ideas and emotions.

You will find that when you slow down a little, life will become more three-dimensional and colorful.

All high efficiency is to help us live a better life, rather than life existing for higher efficiency. Never put the cart before the horse.

References:

1.Grant, A., Dennis, N. A., & Li, P. (2014). Cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and memory in the aging bilingual brain.Frontiers in psychology ,5 , 1401.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Mr. L Says" (ID: lxianshengmiao), written by Li Ruiqiu Lachel, and authorized for release by 36Kr.